Any other ultimate fans or players around here?
If the World Cup left you with a void in your work calendar where gleeful procrastination used to be, may I recommend:
The World Ultimate Club Championships, happening this week in Cincinnati. Happens every 4 years. This is the first time the mainland US has hosted since 1993, and US club teams are the favorites in each division. Most importantly, the live streaming schedule is crazy - as many as 20 games a day, in 5 different time slots, with very few ads, letting you catch your fill.
I enjoyed playing in college and got back into local rec leagues here in NYC during grad school. As the AUDL got started a half-dozen years ago, and as ESPN picked up the college and club championships, I've been pleasantly shocked at how watchable the sport is from a web stream with 2-3 camera angles and halfway decent commentary.
Anyway, with Worlds, they had two rounds of pool play the last 3 days and now the championship brackets are largely set. In the Men's and Women's divisions, the top 8 teams get byes, the next 16 are playing games tomorrow morning for a spot in the R16 wednesday afternoon. In the Mixed division, with the larger group of teams, it's a straight bracket of 32 teams starting tomorrow morning.
- The USA's teams have taken only one loss to a foreign team, with the Denver women's club going down to Colombia Revolution (who are a legit threat to win the title).
- Boston, in particular, has three teams representing: Brute Squad (women's) and two mixed teams: Slow White, and Wild Card. The latter two despise each other, and could meet in the semis.
- There's intrigue in the Men's division, as two of the USA National Team's best players, Jimmy Mickle and Chris Kocher, each saw their US club teams fail to qualify for Worlds... so they went and joined up with an Australian team who did qualify. Here they are going against the best team in Canada, GOAT, earlier today:
---
New to ultimate? You're gonna be glad you checked it out. Here is:
- Ultimate in 10 simple rules
- A 3-minute video that gives a pretty good feel of what it's all about
- A few of the plays that made SportsCenter top 10.
There's a few things the sport overall has going for it:
- Unlike ball sports, the disc hovers in the air, inviting players to go get it, and waiting around for plays to be made. It can bend or slice beautifully, in the right hands.
- The sport lives a commitment to gender equity, rivaled only by tennis. Men's, Women's, and Mixed teams get equal billing at events and TV
- The sport is self-officiated, even at the highest levels, which sounds impossibly quaint, even quixotic... until you see it working and see the genuine sportsmanship and mutual respect that "calling your own fouls" creates. If opposing players can't agree that a foul happened or (say) a catch was out-of-bounds, it becomes a do-over.
- It's stupid-easy to get into, all you need is a disc (though soccer cleats help). You can pretty much drop into a pickup game anywhere and anytime.
If the World Cup left you with a void in your work calendar where gleeful procrastination used to be, may I recommend:
The World Ultimate Club Championships, happening this week in Cincinnati. Happens every 4 years. This is the first time the mainland US has hosted since 1993, and US club teams are the favorites in each division. Most importantly, the live streaming schedule is crazy - as many as 20 games a day, in 5 different time slots, with very few ads, letting you catch your fill.
I enjoyed playing in college and got back into local rec leagues here in NYC during grad school. As the AUDL got started a half-dozen years ago, and as ESPN picked up the college and club championships, I've been pleasantly shocked at how watchable the sport is from a web stream with 2-3 camera angles and halfway decent commentary.
Anyway, with Worlds, they had two rounds of pool play the last 3 days and now the championship brackets are largely set. In the Men's and Women's divisions, the top 8 teams get byes, the next 16 are playing games tomorrow morning for a spot in the R16 wednesday afternoon. In the Mixed division, with the larger group of teams, it's a straight bracket of 32 teams starting tomorrow morning.
- The USA's teams have taken only one loss to a foreign team, with the Denver women's club going down to Colombia Revolution (who are a legit threat to win the title).
- Boston, in particular, has three teams representing: Brute Squad (women's) and two mixed teams: Slow White, and Wild Card. The latter two despise each other, and could meet in the semis.
- There's intrigue in the Men's division, as two of the USA National Team's best players, Jimmy Mickle and Chris Kocher, each saw their US club teams fail to qualify for Worlds... so they went and joined up with an Australian team who did qualify. Here they are going against the best team in Canada, GOAT, earlier today:
---
New to ultimate? You're gonna be glad you checked it out. Here is:
- Ultimate in 10 simple rules
- A 3-minute video that gives a pretty good feel of what it's all about
- A few of the plays that made SportsCenter top 10.
There's a few things the sport overall has going for it:
- Unlike ball sports, the disc hovers in the air, inviting players to go get it, and waiting around for plays to be made. It can bend or slice beautifully, in the right hands.
- The sport lives a commitment to gender equity, rivaled only by tennis. Men's, Women's, and Mixed teams get equal billing at events and TV
- The sport is self-officiated, even at the highest levels, which sounds impossibly quaint, even quixotic... until you see it working and see the genuine sportsmanship and mutual respect that "calling your own fouls" creates. If opposing players can't agree that a foul happened or (say) a catch was out-of-bounds, it becomes a do-over.
- It's stupid-easy to get into, all you need is a disc (though soccer cleats help). You can pretty much drop into a pickup game anywhere and anytime.